When, a little while ago, my publisher expressed a wish to re-issue it, I felt that, before consenting to this, I really should read it again. Nearly fifty years had passed since I had done so, and I had completely forgotten it. Some authors enjoy reading their old works; some cannot bear to. Of these I am. When I have corrected the proofs of a book, I have finished with it for good and all. I am impatient when people insist on talking to me about it; I am glad if they like it, but do not much care if they don’t. I am no more interested in it than a worn-out suit of clothes that I have given away.
Let me cut in hear and say that this author, for one, feels exactly as Maugham describes himself here -- something I shouldn’t forget now that I’ve decided to post the chapters of my latest novel on this blog. But what about The Magician itself? What does Maugham say about it?
It was thus with disinclination that I began to read The Magician. It held my interest, as two of my early novels, which for the same reason I have been obliged to read, did not. … As I read The Magician, I wondered how on earth I could have come by all the material concerning the black arts which I wrote of. I must have spent days and days reading in the library of the British Museum. The style is lush and turgid, not at all the sort of style I approve of now, but perhaps not unsuited to the subject; and there are a great many more adverbs and adjectives than I should use to-day. I fancy I must have been impressed by the ecriture artiste which the French writers of the time had not yet entirely abandoned, and unwisely sought to imitate them.
Maugham makes it sound like a youthful indiscretion, but one which the adult that had grown from that youth doesn’t entirely regret. I can say that it is an unusual Maugham novel, primarily in its subject matter, but clearly a Maugham novel nonetheless -- with all the structural and character-driven craftsmanship that I’ve come to expect from this, one of my favorite authors. To make a modern comparison, it’s like a lost season of Downton Abbey in which the Crawley family get mixed up in necromancy and starts summoning demons.
He pointed to the covering which still hid the largest of the vases. He had a feeling that it contained the most fearful of all these monsters; and it was not without an effort that he drew the cloth away. ...
This is from the last chapter of the novel, in a passage where all is being revealed. The titular Magician is an obese man named Oliver Haddo, a fictional character evidently based on Maugham’s own acquaintance with Aleister Crowley, who, coming to cross purposes with a young British surgeon and his fiancee, bewitches and comes to possess the young woman's mind with his black magic.
… But no sooner had he done this than something sprang up, so that instinctively he started back, and it began to gibber in piercing tones. These were the unearthly sounds that they had heard. …
In this passage, “he” is that young British surgeon, Arthur Burdon. His fiancee, Margaret Dauncey, has already been murdered by Haddo, and Burdon and Haddo have had a death struggle in which Burdon believes he has killed Haddo, but after which no evidence of Haddo’s corpse has remained.
… It was not voice, it was a kind of raucous crying, hoarse yet shrill, uneven like the barking of a dog, and appalling. The sounds came forth in rapid succession, angrily, as though the being that uttered them sought to express itself in furious words. …
Now Burdon is searching Haddo’s apparently abandoned mansion with two companions, and has found the magician’s secret laboratory, in which his necromancy has reached its horrifying apogee in the existence of these misshapen creatures of elemental life.
… It was mad with passion and beat against the glass walls of its prison with clenched fists. For the hands were human hands, and the body, though much larger, was of the shape of a new-born child. The creature must have stood about four feet high. The head was horribly misshapen. The skull was enormous, smooth and distended like that of a hydrocephalic, and the forehead protruded over the face hideously. The features were almost unformed, preternaturally small under the great, over-hanging brow; and they had an expression of fiendish malignity. …
It is for this that we learn Margaret was sacrificed, her lifeforce first feeding Haddo’s voracious vanity and then his demonic creations.
… The tiny, misshapen countenance writhed with convulsive fury, and from the mouth poured out a foaming spume. It raised its voice higher and higher, shrieking senseless gibberish in its rage. Then it began to hurl its whole body madly against the glass walls and to beat its head. It appeared to have a sudden incomprehensible hatred for the three strangers. It was trying to fly at them, the toothless gums moving spasmodically, and it threw its face into horrible grimaces. That nameless, loathsome abortion was the nearest that Oliver Haddo had come to the human form.
I’ve quoted this passage at length because I think it is an excellent example of the "lush and turgid" prose that Maugham evidently regretted having written. It is clearly replete with the kind of adverbs and adjectives used more frequently in the cosmic horror genre to bring the surreal and unfathomable into some semblance of squishy and base reality.
But not all of the novel is like this. Prior to this, it reads more like a psychological thriller, as neither the reader nor any of the characters truly know the extent of Haddo’s powers over Margaret and the structured world she inhabits. Much of it is described from Margaret's point of view, painfully revealing the tensions of her conflicted mind.
Then Margaret felt every day that uncontrollable desire to go to him; and, though she tried to persuade herself not to yield, she knew that her effort was only a pretense: she did not want anything to prevent her. When it seemed that some accident would do so, she could scarcely control her irritation. There was always that violent hunger of the soul which called her to him, and the only happy hours she had were those spent in his company. Day after day she felt that complete ecstasy when he took her in his huge arms, and kissed her with his heavy, sensual lips. But the ecstasy was extraordinarily mingled with loathing, and her physical attraction was allied with physical abhorrence.
Yet when he looked at her with those pale blue eyes, and threw into his voice those troubling accents, she forgot everything. He spoke of unhallowed things. Sometimes, as it were, he lifted a corner of the veil, and she caught a glimpse of terrible secrets. She understood how men had bartered their souls for infinite knowledge. She seemed to stand upon a pinnacle of the temple, and spiritual kingdoms of darkness, principalities of the unknown, were spread before her eyes to lure her to destruction. But of Haddo himself she learned nothing. She did know know if he loved her. She did not know if he had ever loved. He appeared to stand apart from human kind.
It is the dark temptation of Margaret’s soul that Haddo is able to first appeal to, then capture, then bend to his diabolical purpose. And the slow, structured descent that Maugham offers in this novel of youthful indiscretion is a true pleasure to read.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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